All I'm seeing is Andy Palmer and Christian Horner flirting with each other in the press, now Bruce Wood from Cosworth is joining it....pass the sick-bucket!......just get on with it!!!!!

Really from my side, every last Cosworth F1 engine has done nothing special, normally ok in performance, but trimmed down too light and therefore too flimsy as a fully stressed chassis structure, and reject far too much heat requiring big radiators and therefore poor aero performance back in the V8 NA days

Cosworth have no recent turbocharging experience in high-level motorsport......if I was Andy Palmer I'd be knocking on Ilmors door and doing a deal with Mario Illien, as they have recent F1 turbo experience, not to mention IRL-turbo experience.......I think Cosworth are a shadow of their former selves and trading on their past.

The only way to open up F1 engine supply to independent manufacturers like Cosworth and Ilmor (and Zytek and Mugen and maybe Roush) is to simplify the spec drastically and introduce a price cap, and I donít think it will happen.

I'm sceptical about Aston Martin doing F1 at all. They are a small company, not profitable (I think) and F1 isn't cheap. I think Andy Palmer has great plans but is it all talk for publicity? I feel like I know the guy I've seen and heard him so much. I couldn't tell you who the previous AM head was. I really can't see how AM can afford F1, even with the likes of Cosworth.

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All the same, isn't there a grand oul stretch in the evenings...

2016 - But pre-tax loss of £162M - mostly due to investment in the DB11 R&D and tooling, and sterling fluctuation. Really I dont see this as a big deal as the DB11 is now selling like hot-cakes in the US and China.

Overall - AM are ripe for a bit of F1 engine action and could easily afford it, if the FIA make the new regs more sensibly priced and get rid of all the stupid and non-road-relevant stuff like exhaust generators......just a simple single or twin turbo engine.

Check out this link for a more realistic 2017 financial assessment.......AM sales up 75%, I admit profits arent great, but they have plenty of money for R&D investment, and this is where the F1 engine budget would come from.

remember thereís a uk government tax rebate for r&d investment, iíd assume any f1 endeavours would be covered under that.

So for every 100m they spend they get 30 back in a tax rebate, and only if they actually pay any tax so that will still mean they will have spent 100m. Not sure they can afford it. They are doing well with gt cars at the moment probably best they stay with that.

So for every 100m they spend they get 30 back in a tax rebate, and only if they actually pay any tax so that will still mean they will have spent 100m. Not sure they can afford it. They are doing well with gt cars at the moment probably best they stay with that.

agree with you and knighty, it doesn't seem like a great business decision on the surface. which makes me wonder if there's something going on in the background that'd make more sense.

how many similarities are there with when lotus decided to get involved with f1 a few years back?

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devils advocate in-chief and professional arguer of both sides

Aston Martin gets a whole lot of free press courtesy of the F1 press and associated media. They also get spin off credibility from the idea that they are capable of producing an F1 engine.
RBR are able to strengthen their negotiating position in the engine wars by touting that the correct regulation would bring Aston into the field, and may well achieve the RBR objective of introducing cheaper simpler engines into F1.

RBR were talking a while ago about producing their own engines. If RBR did go down that route, it would make perfect sense from both a technical and marketing perspective for a car manufacturer to get on board and for it to be a joint venture.

Who knows, AM and RBR might bring in Illmor or Cosworth in some capacity as well? That was being speculated here last summer:

Aston Martin gets a whole lot of free press courtesy of the F1 press and associated media. They also get spin off credibility from the idea that they are capable of producing an F1 engine.
RBR are able to strengthen their negotiating position in the engine wars by touting that the correct regulation would bring Aston into the field, and may well achieve the RBR objective of introducing cheaper simpler engines into F1.

Not a useless exercise from either Aston Martin or RBR.

The problem with that is 1) the uninformed public has no idea what it takes to make an F1 engine and does not have the means to write the rules, 2) those who write the rules know what is entailed in building an engine and guessing they can tell window dressing when they see it, and 3) the current manufacturers know AM is not capable of dropping everything in to building an engine any time soon. So all of their bravado to the media wastes ink but doesn't get them a second closer to actually making an engine. Something they don't even do in their road cars any longer.

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It was fun while it lasted, have enjoyed the people I've met but the measuring contests and arguments over who's more insider and who's smarter has just made it not worth the effort any longer. It should be fun, not work and it's just work to find actual information.

So all of their bravado to the media wastes ink but doesn't get them a second closer to actually making an engine. Something they don't even do in their road cars any longer.

Unless anything has changed very recently, AM designed and produced it's latest V12 at their engine plant in Cologne, Germany which they opened in about 2004. AM does, however, use AMG electronics and drivetrain, but the engine is theirs alone.